Podcast Remembering the Days – episode 24
Posted on March 22, 2021; Updated: March 22, 2021
By Chris Horn, [email protected], 803-777-3687
Since its founding days in the early 19th century, the University of South Carolina was deeply interested in building a library collection to properly educate its students. Since then, the library’s collection has grown exponentially and includes rare books and special collections that attract international scholars.
TRANSCRIPT
OK, if we were all still in college, it would be time for a mid-semester test – and I have one for you. But relax – it’s just a question!
What do a 19th century Italian sword, a 20th century whiskey bottle and a gigantic pile of American comics have in common?
Do you give up? They are all part of a treasure trove of interesting items found in the university’s Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
The sword belonged to Guieseppe Garibaldi, a famous Italian general. Flash whiskey once resided in the coat pocket of F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of “The Great Gatsby” – that book you should have read in high school.
And the 143,000 comics were donated to the library by Gary Lee Watson, a very avid comic book collector.
I’m Chris Horn, your host for Remembering the days, and today’s episode is not just about foreign objects that the university owns. It is the story of how the University of South Carolina, before the campus opened in 1805, began to build what would become its world-class library.
Shortly after the American Revolution in the late 1700s, public universities began to emerge, especially in the south. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia opened colleges that would later become the major state universities we know today.
Michael Weisenburg: “And if you’re going to have a university, you need books. And they’re building it out of thin air. So they immediately appropriated a lot of money and funds to create a university, build a building, go out and get the books you’re going to need to educate the young male elite of the state of South Carolina. ”
This is Michael Weisenburg, a reference and education librarian at the university.
Michael Weisenburg: “Therefore, the library grows rapidly to around 5,000 titles that represent classical education. Most are in Greek and Latin. Greek and Latin classics. Think of Homer, think of Virgil, think of Ovid. British and modern history is another important topic and the works of some great Americans that we would call founding fathers, but for them they were just their peers at the time. ”
John Drayton was governor of South Carolina from 1801 to 1803 and was instrumental in establishing South Carolina College, which became the University of South Carolina. Drayton gave the college its first major donation of books from his personal library in 1807. At the same time, the college was anxiously working with book dealers in New York, London and Paris to acquire books that have just come out of print.
Michael Weisenburg: “And now we are privileged to have these books very rare and hard to find, because they had the vision to buy them when they were new. Birds of America, by John James Audubon, is probably the most extreme example of this, but we also have a complete set of Piranesi’s works, which most institutions do not have a complete set of. He is an Italian engraver at the time. ”
In the 1820s and 1830s, the college wanted to modernize its collection of scientific books, so they started to acquire degrees in mathematics, economics and other sciences. That was when we received some of Charles Darwin’s first books. And at that time, South Carolina College did something that no other college in the United States had done – built a building for the sole purpose of housing its library collection. We call it the South Carolina Library now – when it was built in 1840, they just called it a new library.
Michael Weisenburg: “And it is important to note that this was the first independent academic library in the United States. South Carolina had one before Harvard, and one before Yale had one before Princeton. This shows how much they valued libraries in the period and how much money they’re investing to ensure they have a world class academic library or at least a national academic library here in South Carolina.
Thereafter, the legislature approves $ 4,000 to purchase more books, with an additional allocation of $ 2,000 to $ 3,000 in recurring annual budgets for the purchase of libraries. It was a lot of money in the period. ”
The years during and after the Civil War were not kind to the collection of the university library. The state’s economy was in shambles, so there were no more generous funds to obtain new books. A good thing, however, that happened in the 1870s was the arrival of Richard T. Greener, a philosophy professor who also reorganized the library and introduced the first card catalog here. You can learn more about Greener in an episode of Remembering the days called “Greater than life”.
The United States was in the midst of the Great Depression in the 1930s, but ts University of South Carolina obtained federal funding for a new library on campus, which was named after J. Rion McKissick, the institution’s president at the time. In the 1970s, the Thomas Cooper Library was completed, and in 2010, the Hollings Special Collections Library was added to the south side of the main library.
So I started talking about a sword and a whiskey canteen and a really big pile of comic books in the library. What other noteworthy items does the library contain?
Michael Weisenburg: “We have some ancient Sumerian and cuneiform tablets from Babylon and Acadian. Not many, but they are good for teaching and showing students the first examples of writing we have in the library. Our oldest Bible is from 1240. It was probably made in Oxford and it’s a small pocket Bible so that Franciscans can walk around and carry it with them. And by pocket Bible, I mean it would fit in a bag, right? It’s small enough to put in a bag. We have a collection We have the first edition of Paradise Lost. We have the best collection of Scottish literature outside Britain. We regularly receive people from Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh who come here to work with our collection of Scottish literature. We have a great collection of Scottish literature. The Charles Darwin collection, and we have excellent collections in natural history and a wonderful collection of history of astronomy from the early 15th century to the present. ”
The library also has one of the first books ever printed in Europe, a volume written by a church theologian that dates back to 1471. One of the first published books written by an African American is in the university’s collection – it is a 1773 edition of Poems on various subjects, religious and moral, by Phyllis Wheatley. This book is one of many that the library has been digitized and made available for everyone to view online.
The first volume that the library acquired is marked as number 1 in its book – it is a history book about England that covers the period of King George III at the end of the American Revolution. In 1971, the library acquired its millionth book – a rare 1855 printed copy of Walt Whitman’s collection of poetry entitled Leaves of Grass.
Over the past 50 years, the university library has acquired millions more books. The library now also houses some interesting items, such as James Dickey’s typewriter, the roles of police fiction writers like Dashiell Hammett and Elmore Leonard and one of the best collections of Ernest Hemingway’s works in the country.
It has already been said that a library is the heart and soul of a university – the repository of what is most important. And now you know a little more about the heart and soul and the vast collection of your university’s library. Stop a while if you can or check out the digital collection from the comfort of your sofa. I have included some links in the program notes for this episode.
Remembering the days it is produced by the Office of Communications and Public Relations and, in the next episode, we will hear the story of a young woman born in slavery and later educated on the University of South Carolina campus. Until then, I am Chris Horn – forever for you.
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Topics: History, University Libraries